November 19th was Senior Day in Provo. 19 BYU seniors walked off the field victorious as the Cougars beat New Mexico State 42-7. That’s now back to back weeks where BYU has beaten an opponent by a 42-7 score.

The biggest storyline going into tonight’s contest was how Jake Heaps would perform coming off a nice performance last week against Idaho. Heaps finished the night with a very impressive 238 yards and 4 touchdowns. He did have an interception, which was the result of once again staring right at his receiver. Outside of the turnover and a couple overthrown footballs, I thought Heaps played well. The one play that really showed Heaps progress was on the TD to Falslev. Heaps ducked under a sack, stepped into the pocket and fired a strike to JD for the touchdown. In fact, after the game Bronco Mendenhall called that play the best of Heaps BYU career. To put in perspective the kind of game Jake had today consider this…before tonight’s 4 touchdown performance, Heaps had 5 total touchdowns on the year. In case you were wondering, Heaps career high for touchdowns in a game is 4.

JJ Di Luigi led the team in rushing with 75 yards on 12 carries while Ross Apo carried the Cougars through the air with 66 yards on 5 catches with 2 touchdowns. In total, BYU had 6 receivers finish with at least 20 yards receiving.

The BYU defense started out shaky but ultimately settled down and completely shut down the Aggie offense. New Mexico State was able to move the ball but outside of the early score, they couldn’t do much. Preston Hadley and Brandon Ogletree led the team in tackles with 7 apiece while Jadon Wagner, Graham Rowley and Simote Vea each had a sack.

One of the really nice stories tonight was the gesture made by Kyle Van Noy to wear Jordan Pendleton’s #1 jersey during the game. Pendleton is one of the 19 seniors on this roster but saw his season come to an end after suffering a knee injury in the TCU game. Van Noy and Pendleton are great friends and Kyle wanted to make sure Jordan was represented on Senior Day.

Staying with the senior theme, a couple of not-often-used seniors scored touchdowns. Matt Marshall and Matt Edwards each got into the endzone. What makes those scores even more important was that it was each players first ever touchdown as a Cougar. Safe to say those guys will remember tonight for a long time.

BYU will have their 2nd bye week of the season. They’ll take this week off for Thanksgiving and then get ready to play their regular season finale on December 3rd at Hawaii…

Shep